Among the casualties has been Bytedance, the extremely high-flying $20 billion media unicorn startup that was forced to publicly apologize for content that degraded the character of the nation. The government forced the company to shut down its popular Neihan Duanzi comedy app, as well as to remove its headline news app, Jinri Toutiao, for three weeks. The company announced that it would expand the number of human censors from 6,000 to 10,000.

Meanwhile, over at Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter-like service, the company announced on Friday that it would ban violent and gay content from its service, following instructions from the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television. LGBT content has been in the crosshairs of the country’s media regulators for years; for example, censors banned “abnormal sexual behaviors” from being depicted in any media or mobile apps in 2017, a term which includes homosexuality.

China’s censorship regime is certainly not new, but its intensity around culture and how it is depicted is relatively novel. While the Chinese government has generally kept a tight lid on political dissent, particularly since the Tiananmen Protests in 1989, it has generally used a lighter touch on non-political subjects.

However, the Communist Party of China is now attempting to control the culture much more directly, not just on broadcast media like television, but also on apps and devices throughout the Middle Kingdom.

The crackdown on speech is expected to continue over the coming weeks as the new rules are applied uniformly across the country. The situation is a reminder of the challenges of Chinese companies operating in the heavily controlled country.

Although there are many trade tensions between the U.S. and China these days, a key issue has been access to the Chinese market for American technology companies. Even if China were to open its borders though, it remains unclear how U.S. companies could faithfully apply the law of China while maintaining their own moral standards.